Drug and Alcohol Addiction Treatment Centers In New Mexico

New Mexico is a southwestern border state, with Mexico to the south, Texas to the east, Arizona on its western border, and Colorado to the north. The landscape of New Mexico is made up of mountains and desert land, and it is well known for its Spanish architecture, upscale spas, and skiing during the winter months. The capital city is Santa Fe, founded in 1610, and the state as a whole is home to about two million people.

Substance Abuse in New Mexico

New Mexico has maintained rates of alcohol-related deaths well above the national average since at least 1990 and has experienced a sharp increase since 2013. A 2017 state epidemiological profile reports that the leading cause of alcohol-related death in New Mexico is chronic liver disease at a rate of 18.3 deaths per 100,000 people. The second leading alcohol-related cause of death in the state is alcohol abuse at a rate of 4.8 deaths per 100,000, followed by alcohol dependence at 2.9 deaths per 100,000 people.

In 2015, New Mexico had the eighth-highest drug overdose death rate in the nation, 85 percent of which were unintentional overdoses. The epidemiological profile reports that 45 percent of unintentional overdoses in New Mexico were the result of prescription drug misuse, 40 percent were due to illicit drugs, and 15 percent involved both types of drugs. Drug overdose deaths have been an enormous concern as the years between 2011 and 2015 brought overdose death rates in some New Mexico counties as high as 85.8 deaths per 100,000 people, nearly six and a half times the national average. Despite a decline in overdose death rates around 2014, New Mexico was above the national average at 17.5 deaths per 100,000 people in 2016, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). NIDA also reports that in the previous year of 2015, New Mexico providers wrote 70.0 opioid prescriptions per 100 people, which is equivalent to the national average for the same year.

The New Mexico Prescription Drug Monitoring Program has been tracking steady declines in many problem areas for the state, including individuals with prescriptions for benzodiazepines and opioids, high-dose opioids and benzodiazepines, and individuals using multiple prescribers or pharmacies. In addition to monitoring and reducing dangerous prescribing practices, New Mexico has also implemented more resources for buprenorphine treatments, which have been on a steady incline from 2017 through 2018.